Missouri governor commutes sentence of white police officer convicted of
fatally shooting Black man
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 [December 21, 2024]
By DAVID A. LIEB and HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A white former Kansas City police officer who
was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the fatal shooting of a
Black man was released from prison Friday after Missouri’s governor
commuted his sentence to parole.
The decision by Republican Gov. Mike Parson to free Eric DeValkenaere
came after months of public debate about the case, which had fueled both
racial justice protests and impassioned pleas for mercy from
DeValkenaere's supporters who asserted he had been unjustly convicted.
DeValkenaere was serving a six-year prison sentence. He was convicted in
2021 of killing 26-year-old Cameron Lamb as he backed into his garage.
Lamb’s name was invoked frequently during racial injustice protests in
Kansas City in 2020 following the police killing of George Floyd in
Minneapolis. Lamb’s family even met with then-President Donald Trump
that year.
Parson did not pardon DeValkenaere but rather shortened his sentence to
parole, subject to normal restrictions against possessing firearms,
traveling out of state without permission and other items. He granted a
similar commutation of parole to Patty Prewitt, another high-profile
prisoner who had spent 40 years behind bars for her husband’s killing.
The Department of Corrections confirmed both were freed Friday
afternoon, before Parson publicly announced his decisions. DeValkenaere
had been held in an out-of-state prison for his own safety, said
Department of Corrections spokesperson Karen Pojmann.
Jason Johnson, president of the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund,
which supports DeValkenaere, said they “will continue to fight to
completely clear” his name. Johnson said in a statement that
DeValkenaere had an outstanding record of service, adding: "While we
strongly maintain that Eric is completely innocent, even those who do
not must recognize that the ends of justice are not served by his
incarceration.”
The clemency announcements came just weeks before Parson is to end his
term, capping a historic string of such actions. Parson, a former rural
sheriff, has pardoned or commuted the sentences of more than 800 people
while clearing a backlog of more than 3,500 clemency requests he
inherited upon taking office in June 2018. That's the most granted
clemency cases of any Missouri governor since the 1940s. Most granted
clemency had been convicted of lower-level crimes involving drugs or
theft. But Parson also denied more than 3,000 clemency petitions.
Gwendolyn Grant, president and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Kansas
City, said the DeValkenaere clemency decision will tarnish Parson's
legacy and “will fuel deeper divisions and ignite justified outrage."
Grant called Parson's decision “nothing short of a flagrant endorsement
of systemic racism and a betrayal of justice. By freeing a convicted
officer who unlawfully killed Cameron Lamb, a young Black man, the
governor has made it crystal clear that Black lives do not matter in the
state of Missouri under his leadership.”
At trial, DeValkenaere testified that he fired his weapon on Dec. 3,
2019, after Lamb pointed a gun at another detective, Troy Schwalm, and
that he believed his actions saved his partner’s life.
Prosecutors, however, argued that police shouldn’t have been on the
property and staged the shooting scene to support their claims that Lamb
was armed.
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Former Kansas City police detective Eric DeValkenaere listens to
witness statements during his sentencing hearing, March 4, 2022, in
Kansas City, Mo. (Jill Toyoshiba/The Kansas City Star via AP, File)
“DeValkenaere was convicted for killing an unarmed man. Period,"
Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker said in a social media
post Friday. “He was shown incredible mercy by the Governor. No such
mercy was shown to the victims. Today we will focus our time caring
for Cameron’s family rather than commenting further.”
Messages left with attorneys for the Lamb family were not
immediately returned Friday.
Evidence presented during the trial, which was held without a jury
at DeValkenaere’s request, showed that DeValkenaere kicked over a
barricade to get into Lamb's backyard.
The trial judge, Dale Youngs, said the officers had no warrant for
Lamb’s arrest and had no search warrant or consent to be on the
property. He called it a tragic case with troubling facts and said
DeValkenaere and the officer with him escalated a situation that had
been calmed. He didn’t address allegations that evidence had been
planted.
DeValkenaere left the police force after his conviction but remained
free on bond until he lost his appeal in October 2023. The Missouri
Supreme Court subsequently declined to hear an appeal.
DeValkenaere’s wife, Sarah DeValkenaere, took to social media
earlier this week — as she had done often — urging followers to
request a pardon.
“I miss him so much,” she said in a message on X in November. “So
sad that an officer who dedicated his life to serving our city is
now in prison for doing his job.”
Parson did not not offer an explanation for his clemency decisions
while announcing them Friday. But he had previously acknowledged the
pressure in an interview in August on KCMO Talk Radio.
“There’s not a week that goes by that somebody’s not reaching out to
me about that issue, and we’re going to see what happens here before
long. I’ll leave it at that. But you know, I don’t like where he’s
at. I’ll just say that,” Parson said.
Prewitt, now 75, had filed multiple clemency requests over the
years. She was serving a life sentence after being convicted of
fatally shooting her husband, Bill Prewitt, in 1984 as he slept in
their home in the rural east-central Missouri town of Holden.
Prewitt, a mother of five, said a stranger broke into the house. She
declined a plea deal that would have given her the chance for parole
after five to seven years. Prosecutors said Prewitt cheated on her
husband and her ex-lovers testified at trial in 1985 that she had
talked about killing Bill Prewitt.
But Patty Prewitt’s backers argued that her relationship with her
husband was improving and that the evidence of her infidelity would
not be allowed in court today. In addition, Georgetown University
law students examining the case found prosecutors failed to tell
defense attorneys that two days after Prewitt’s husband was killed,
a neighbor told investigators she had seen a man parked at the end
of a nearby dirt road in heavy rain on the night of the murder.
___
Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas. Associated Press writer
Steve Karnowski contributed from Minneapolis.
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